"Correspondences" casts a wide overview of U.S. post-war policy that touches upon the U.S. State Department's role on Hawaii's statehood history. Setting the backdrop for the Hawai'i statehood story, Correspondences examines the role of the larger international economic impulse that affects us today utilizing primary documents emphasizing how the U.S took advantage of post-war mechanisms to literally design a dominant economic power and architect an economic system that may be as relevant today as it was during the time of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

Pt. 1 primarily visits the traditional statehood story, and begins to look at the constitutional debate that went on in Congress during statehood years over the treaty clause, a backlash against the international agreements resulting from the signing of the UN Charter and introduces Senators Knowland and Bricker, leading the charge.

Pt. 2 looks at the role of the US after the signing of the UN Charter and introduces post-war planning, Bretton Woods, and the new relationship of territories to the administering powers. Establishes a complicated backdrop through which the State Department uses the opportunity of post-war reconstruction and convinces Congress to allocate funds to "co-opt" the Bretton Woods mechanisms through both 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which evolved into the WTO in 1995, and the 1948 Economic Cooperation Act (Marshall Plan) which turned into the 1951 Mutual Securities Act, both of which are still in use today, thereby taking the lead in international trade, commerce and labor.

Pt. 3 brings these disparate perspectives together to create the argument that Hawaii's statehood, was more of a result of international U.S. economic hegemony and of a broader cold-war policy, than simply the lobbying efforts of Burns and the Statehood Commission.